Annual Report 2008

Introduction

How this report works

The Annual Report comes in two parts. This first part is a summary of the work the Council has done during the last financial year and some areas of investment planned for this year.

Part Two gives more information about the Council, our vision, values and objectives. It includes a summary of our accounts and our performance against all the statutory Best Value Performance Indicators for 2007/08. This is available from the Performance page.

The Mayor's Priorities

The Mayor’s aim is to achieve a good quality of life for all in Hackney. He has set three priorities that underpin all work the Council does:

Priority 1

Improving services and increasing opportunities for all, raising the life chances of the most disadvantaged.

Priority 2

Making sure the Council is high performing and efficient.

Priority 3

Providing effective community leadership and involving the whole borough in what we do.

Working together to make Hackney better

The Council often works together with other organisations on projects to increase the quality of life for local residents. The Council is a lead member of the borough’s local strategic partnership – Team Hackney – which is made up of organisations from the public, private, community and voluntary sectors, such as the police, local health service and Job Centre Plus. Its aim is to achieve the vision of making Hackney a better place to live, work and visit.

The partnership, chaired by Mayor Jules Pipe, has identified some important areas to focus on. These are set out in the three-year Local Area Agreement (LAA) developed with central Government, which is available at www.teamhackney.org.

Meeting the targets set out in the LAA will help us and our partners realise the 10-year vision in the new Community Strategy. This will be available from Autumn 2008 on the Community Strategy page.

Improving customer services

The quality of customer services is improving, making it easier for our residents to do business with the Council. In the last 12 months we opened new, modern facilities for our cashiers, parking, planning and building control services. We also extended the opening times of the Hackney Service Centre. Our new customer services centre is being built behind the Town Hall and will open in 2010.

A range of services across the Council are now run more efficiently so that residents have their queries dealt with more quickly. For example, our benefits processing times are a third better than the Government target and the time taken for registering births has halved.

Staff in the Council are committed to help us achieve our objectives for the area. In a recent staff survey, 92% stated their commitment, compared to the national average of just 62%.

Back to top

Page updated: 27 Jun 2008